


Lot #37

by AreYouReady



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Angst is Maybe the Closest Approximation, Creepy, Eldritch Abominations, Gen, Horror, Lot #37 Speculation, Neither Fluff nor Angst, Weird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 03:59:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1102146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AreYouReady/pseuds/AreYouReady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos buys Lot #37, because he just KNOWS Cecil will run into some kind of trouble if he doesn't.<br/>It's not what he expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lot #37

**Author's Note:**

> This does not follow my Cecil headcanon, nor does it follow my headcanon as to what actually happened with Lot #37, but I thought of it, and I liked it, so here it is.

_Oh, Cecil,_ thought Carlos, as he walked back to his lab from the action. The thing was, he knew Cecil. Fairly well, in fact. And as soon as he heard about it on the radio, he’d known that Cecil would want to buy Lot #37, but would also be unbelievably dumb about it somehow. He hadn’t known exactly how, but he’d decided to bid, just in case. At least if Carlos was the one who bought… Whatever was being sold under the name “Cecil Palmer,” Cecil would get it back. So he’d bid, and won. Apparently, no one in Night Vale was willing to break up the _celebrity couple._

Because that’s what they were to this strange little town. Cecil was a big name, and he’d made his crush on Carlos the talk of the town when he’d thought it was unreciprocated.  So now, Carlos got catcalled when he walked down the street, and couldn’t get a haircut without dooming the barber to exile, but he also had a lot of people fairly invested in making his life easier, and he needed all the help he could get, never mind the reasoning.

So no one had outbid him, and he’d managed to get Lot #37, “Cecil Palmer,” for just fifty dollars. When he’d gone to collect, he was told that he would find a package in his home containing his prize. So, he walked home empty handed, and filled with strange anticipation. What exactly _was_ Lot #37? It couldn’t be Cecil, he’d _seen_ Cecil in the auction house. Then again, this _was_ Night Vale, the town where anything was not only possible, but probably hiding under your bed. But it _probably_ wasn’t Cecil.

When he arrived at the lab, he opened the door with trepidation. What would he find?

The answer lay in the canter of the largest room, in between the two widest spaced lab benches. A wooden crate, seven feet on its longest axis, 4 on its shortest. It stood there, beckoning him, and he was drawn irresistibly toward it. While he approached, he spared a thought as to whether the pull was a result of his own curiosity, or perhaps an effect of the box, but discarded it in favor of crowbarring open (where did he get a crowbar?) the lid. It took a substantial amount of time, more than Carlos exactly wanted to wait, and effort, though not more than Carlos was willing to expend. Finally, after twenty minutes of determined prying, the lid popped off, revealing the box’s contents.

It was a coffin.

A coffin.

A thing they put dead people in.

There was no reason anything to do with Cecil had to do with dead people, was there?

Maybe it was someone with the same name, and they were dead.

Yes, that was it.

Obviously.

Carlos was stupid for even considering the possibility of anything else.

There wasn’t anything else it could be.

It was just the dead body of someone Carlos didn’t know, whose name just happened to be Cecil Palmer.

Of course.

But still, best to check.

Carlos eased open the lid ever so carefully, noting that it had not been nailed shut. When it opened enough to see inside, his first thought was a rush of relief. The body inside wasn’t Cecil’s. Well, it wasn’t his Cecil’s. This person, (well, kid, really), was at least twenty five years younger than Cecil, and where Cecil’s skin was purple, (people in Night Vale had _all kinds_ of weird physiologies), the kid’s skin was a dark brown. The kid also lacked Cecil’s tattoos, and Carlos was pleased by this final proof.

But then, he started to notice certain things. The shape of the boy’s face, so very angular. His nose so long, and cheekbones so prominent. His hands, so large and yet delicate. A thousand other little things, as well, not worth listing, and yet they all pulled him to an inescapable conclusion, impossible, yet true: This was, in fact, Cecil. Even though it wasn’t exactly _his_ Cecil.

Carlos slammed the lid of the coffin shut, hands shaking. He ran from the room, all the way up the stairs, through the hallway of tiny apartments inhabited by his team, into the one he called his own, slamming the door behind him.

Inside, he put his back to the door, panting, feeling as though he had been chased by some unspeakable monster. He ran a hand through his hair habitually, and equally habitually flicked on the radio for comfort. Jumped slightly when it crackled to life, and Cecil was just finishing up his broadcast. He was alternately congratulating and threatening the “unknown” purchaser of lot #37, and Carlos let out a hysterical giggle. He stayed there, though, leaning against the door, breathing deeply, fingernails digging into the wood, until the ending music played, letting Cecil’s voice soothe his shattered nerves, as it always seemed to.

Only when the show was over, and he was quite a bit calmer, did Carlos turn the radio off again. He sighed, and grabbed a Polaroid camera, the kind that printed the photo immediately. Digital data was just far too easy for whatever impossible phenomenon he was studying on any given week to screw with, and he’d just gotten used to using it. So, steeling himself, he turned it on, and marched back downstairs. He was a scientist after all, and a scientist needed a record of their observations.

The coffin was just where he’d left it, and Carlos let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. He hadn’t really expected it to move, but, well, this was Night Vale. He opened the top, seeing again that _not-Cecil’s_ still, young, oh so _very_ young face, shivered, and snapped his first picture.

Between photographs, Carlos began to do other simple tests. He touched the corpse, and it was warm. In fact, corpse was the wrong word: he checked its pulse, and there was a heartbeat, faint and slow, but steady. When he checked for pupil contraction in the eyes, (dark brown, unlike _his_ Cecil’s brilliant purple), though, there was no response. So Carlos continued taking pictures, wanting to wait for the rest of his team to come back from wherever they were around town, since _he_ was not a medical expert, but some of _them_ were.

About halfway through Carlos’s bout of photo documentarianism, there was a knock on the door of the lab. Carlos went to get it, wondering who it might be, since any members of his team would have simply let themselves in, and anyone else would have called first. So he opened the door in his lab coat, camera dangling on its cord around his neck, totally unprepared for his visitor.

It was Cecil. Cecil, oh so predictable Cecil, who _of course_ would have come to Carlos for comfort about his loss of Lot #37, of course would show up unannounced on his doorstep, because he expected Carlos to expect him. Carlos drew in a sharp breath anyway.

“Hello Carlos,” Cecil greeted, dejection in every line of his body.

“Hey Cecil,” responded Carlos, unsure what to do. But he thought a hug might be necessary in this situation, so he provided one. Truth be told, it was as much for his own comfort as Cecil’s.

“Oh, Carlos,” said Cecil into Carlos’s shoulder, “It’s awful. Someone bought me! Or, something that is me… I don’t know, I’ll never know. Carlos…” he let out a long sigh.

“Um, Cecil,” ventured Carlos,

“Yes?” asked Cecil, half-hopefully.

“I, uh, bought it. Lot #37, I mean. It was me.”

“What?” Cecil said, seeming confused and pulling away from the hug slightly, “Why would you do that?”

“Uh, well,” Carlos started, and then plowed on: “I thought it might be important to you, since, y’know, it was, um, you, and I thought, well, if you didn’t have the chance, I would. So I did.” Carlos finished. Cecil stared at him for a minute, and then:

“Oh, Carlos! You are _perfect._ What could I have ever done to deserve you?” Cecil said, re-initiating the embrace, thought it was an expression of joy this time, instead of a comfort against sorrow.

“Well, uh, you’d better come see it.” Carlos said. Cecil looked at him oddly, but followed as he walked into the lab.

When Cecil saw the coffin, Carlos felt a shiver in the air. Something was wrong. Carlos turned to Cecil, only to see that something… _other_ had taken his place. Carlos stepped back, tripped over his own feet, and fell on his ass.

Cecil, already incredible tall, seemed to have grown taller. His teeth, though as flat as always, gave the impression of fangs. His shoulders and back were ramrod straight, his entire body stiff. His usually neat hair was wild, as though someone had run an electric current through it. All his tattoos were gone. But worst were his eyes. Every part of them was a shining, blind, _blinding_ white. And there were three of them. In the center of his forehead, where Cecil normally had a tattoo of a stylized eye, there was a real one, the same staring white as the others.

No, actually, the worst part was the fact that he seemed to be flickering, as though he were an illusion, behind which there was a massive entity made of eyes and tentacles and _wrongness_. Carlos suddenly knew that _this_ was what Cecil’s tattoos normally depicted, this _creature._ Maybe Carlos didn’t know Cecil as well as he thought he did.

 

**Scientist.**

The thing was speaking to him. Carlos crawled backward, unable to look away

 

**You are the outsider. The one that my Voice cares for.**

It took Carlos a moment to register that as a question. When he did, he nodded assent.

 

**If you care for him, you will not show him this.**

“What? Why? What are you?” Carlos blurted, voice at least an octave higher than it should have been.

 

**He cannot see this, because he cannot know that he is anything other than human. He cannot know that he is me.**

Carlos made a few noises, none of which were very loud or coherent. The thing seemed amused.

 

**In answer to your second question, I am this place. I am Night Vale. Now, take that thing away. Hide it. He must never know.**

Carlos scrabbled back few more steps, and then jumped up. He did as he was told, dragging the coffin between the rows of lab benches, which made a horrible screeching sound that he would’ve noticed, under other circumstances. He opened a supply closet and shoved it in. Then he turned back to the thing, to Night Vale, to ask one last question:

“What is it, though?”

 

**It is Cecil, as he was when I took him, and as he shall remain until I find another Voice.**

Before Carlos could enquire about that cryptic statement, the air shivered again, and Cecil said,

“So where is it?” Carlos looked down at his hand, which was clutching something. It was a piece of paper, with the official seal of the Sherriff’s Secret Police on it, and large print proclaiming: _Certificate of Ownership of Cecil Gershwin Palmer,_ and a lot of small print. Carlos, thinking on his feet, replied,

“It was this. I, uh, thought we could burn it.”

-

They roasted marshmallows over the flame. It was nice, almost romantic. The smell of the fire was a bit gross, though. That was because, when Cecil wasn’t looking, Carlos had tossed in the photographs. It was a good thing he had, too, because if he’d looked at them, he would have seen the actual contents of the coffin: the rotting corpse of a teenage boy, at least seventy years dead, with the expression of terror still visible on his face.


End file.
